Thx Filmmakers

by Caitlyn McTier

As the rain beats down on the window, I find myself sitting at the hairdresser attempting to write some thank you notes while the stylist does her magic. She takes a second to pop in a movie from one of the best gifts from God - The Red Box - and it’s the film “The Intern.”

Thank for… it means the world… sincerely….

Over and over, I attempted to write thank you notes, and over and over, I failed. No matter how hard I tried to focus on my task I couldn’t help but notice the television screen.

When the movie starring everyone's favorite princess of Genovia Anne Hathaway came out, I had heard some buzz about how monumental it was in the feminist community, but I never really took the time to watch.

If you don’t know anything about the movie, here’s the skimm (btw theSkimm is my fav news source, look em up). So it starts out looking like a classic boy meets girl, girl falls in love with boy, they get married and have kids and girl gives up her a career to be a stay at home mom. Plot twist, let’s flip that over. Same story except boy becomes a stay at home dad.

So you’re probably wondering where this intern comes in the story. This older gentleman named Ben Whitaker, is living a fairly mundane life following the death of his late wife. He’s on the search to recharge himself and finds what he’s longing for on a flyer advertising a “senior” internship at a company that runs an online clothing store. In an attempt to not make this post too much of a spoiler, I’ll make this brief. He gets paired as an intern with the founder, Jules (also that “girl” I was talking about earlier), and he finds himself serving as a mentor to her.

Every good movie has to have a major conflict, and this one just happens to deal with feminism. Jules, this wildly popular founder, finds herself between a rock and a hard place of choosing between being a full time working mother while leaving her husband and daughter at home or relinquishing a large part of her company to cut back her workload to be a mom. She goes through many twist and turns in her journey to find her identity and accept it, but when she claims it, Jules becomes the ultimate symbol of Girl Power.

While watching the movie, I found myself slightly upset by the idea that being a stay at home dad or women working in high profile jobs without being harshly criticized was so uncommon. It’s been very interesting to see how pop culture and the film industry are truly some of the main groups fighting against this stigma.

For example, have you seen the recent amazon ad lately? It’s an Alexa Ad (side note: Alexa furreal makes me scared of technology, but it’s fine, so fine). The main character is a middle aged man who is a stay at home dad. As viewers we follow his schedule through the day while his wife leaves reminders on their Alexa. Let’s just say his day was brutal. This video demonstrated the hard work that stay at home parents go through and how tiring taking care of a child is.

The first time I saw the commercial run, I didn’t even recognize how monumental it was to recognize men as the main daily caretaker. After watching it a few times, It all of a sudden overwhelming hit me the weight that 30 second ad carried.

I think that as a nation and a world we are in a pivotal time. The feminist movement is clearly picking up more speed than ever, and the world is starting to see women as true working members of society. So here’s The Truth: Ever since the invention of the television, people's lives and world views have been shaped by what they see on the screen. With that said, Hollywood is helping our girls out and recognizing our value like never before. The Dare: Let’s support movies and companies that see the value in women. If it’s spending money at the theatre to see a movie with a lead female role or buying yet another product from Amazon, we need to start putting our money where our mouth is.